Beautiful Country House in Astashovo

In 2011, an entrepreneur from Moscow, Andrey Pavlichenkov, bought a 19th-century country house (sometimes called “terem”) in Astashovo, Kostroma region. The house was destroyed: not a single window, all doors and floors were broken, and the ovens were destroyed. The house had to be dismantled and reassembled.

The friends of the entrepreneur and local residents participated in the restoration. Gradually, it turned into a guest house, where tourists can stay. There have already been visitors from the Far East, Switzerland, Ukraine and Moscow.

Outside, the house looks like fairy tales castle, but inside it is furnished as a modern apartment: there are Wi-Fi and electricity plugs, microwave oven and electric kettle next to the traditional Russian oven.

The country house was built at the end of the 19th century by the former peasant Martyan Sazonov. After the abolition of serfdom, he left for work in Petersburg, where he managed to get rich. Upon his return to the Kostroma region, he begged a girl younger than him for more than 30 years to marry him. And as a gift, he built the country house for her.

Both houses were nationalized after the revolution. Soon, local villages gradually began to die out and the estates was abandoned. Until the 1970s, nobody touched the building built by Ivan Polyashov, bu then it was bought by an artist from Moscow, Anatoly Zhigalov. Pavlichenkov decided to help him with the restoration, and then he came up with the idea to restore the tower in Astashovo.